


We Dreamed a Garden

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Incest, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, First Time, Non-Penetrative Sex, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:08:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Once, Shaun kissed the back of my neck in the middle of the night--one feather-light kiss, long after we'd gone to bed on our fifteenth birthday. He ran his hand up my side, from my hip to the top of my ribcage, careful not to even brush against my chest. When I caught his hand and wove my fingers into his, keeping him from either exploring further or pulling away, he whispered my name. I whispered his name back, and that was all. For right then, that was enough.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>After that, almost two months passed before he slept in my bed again.</i>
</p><p>Set seven years before <i>Feed</i>. You can't choose who you fall in love with. The only decision you get to make is what to do about it.</p><p>(The first chapter can be read on its own, and as such would only be rated "Teen And Up"; it's the second chapter that earns the "Explicit" rating.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta work by wildpear.
> 
> Title from "Myths", by Lorna Crozier.
> 
> Content Advisory: Contains consensual sexual activity between sixteen-year-olds.

  
_"We dreamed each other at the same time and we dreamed a garden."_ \--Lorna Crozier

Shaun and I were almost fourteen when I admitted to myself that there was something I couldn't write down. I was lying on my stomach in bed, our paper journal propped up on my pillow so I could write about my day, when I got distracted mid-sentence by imagining Shaun reading it over my shoulder--lying next to me and touching the page, then my hand. I could almost feel his fingers on my wrist.

The way that fleeting thought made me feel wasn't new. What was new was that I stopped writing and let myself keep imagining it--effortlessly, because I knew exactly what his hands felt like--and let myself _feel_ what it was doing to me.

Shivering under the phantom weight of his arm across my back, I stared at the open journal and composed a new sentence in my head: _I want Shaun to touch me._

I thought about letting that sentence take shape in ink. I thought about him reading it. And something went cold inside me, because anything he could read, anyone else could read too. My immediate instinct, so quick and sharp I flinched, was to bury that feeling so deep no one could find it, not even him.

It was the first time in my life I'd wanted to hide something from Shaun, and _that_ feeling made me angry. I snapped our journal shut, abandoning that other half-written sentence, and got up to knock on the door connecting our rooms.

I heard footsteps as Shaun came to the door rather than calling for me to come in. "Do you have your sunglasses on?"

"No."

There was a pause while he switched off whatever lights he'd had on, and then the door was open and he was blinking at me in the sudden dimness. "Are you okay?" he asked, not trying to hide his confusion. I rarely went into his room without warning, but I also never _knocked_ , any more than he did back then.

I put my hand on his shoulder without answering. I had to reach up to do it--only a little, but more than I had the last time I'd paid serious attention to our heights. He went perfectly still, as if he'd forgotten how to breathe. Slowly, I moved my hand to the side of his neck, so that his pulse beat under my fingertips. With my palm against his throat, a tingle went through me when he said my name. "George?"

"I wanted to touch you."

His pulse sped up. "Okay."

"Do you want to touch me?"

"All the time." His reply came readily enough, but he didn't reach for me. There was enough light for me to see that his eyes looked scared. Mine probably did too.

I withdrew my hand. "I just wanted to tell you. I didn't write it down."

"Georgia?" This time he said it uncertainly, as if it were a foreign word, and then his voice steadied. "Me neither. I've never written it down."

"I know." We stared at each other across the threshold between our rooms. "Good night."

Shaun laughed at that, and most of the tension between us--tension that had my throat tight and my mouth dry--broke. "Sweet dreams," he said, teasing in a way I wanted to tear open and unravel.

Instead, I said, "You too," and shut the door.

**********

Shaun and I had always shared everything, including our ferocious need for each other, and now we were sharing the way that need was changing beneath the surface. But that one conversation was the closest we came to talking about it for nearly three years.

We kept sleeping together occasionally, the way we had since our parents had split us into separate bedrooms. Shaun would lock his door before slipping into my room with his pillow and making himself comfortable between me and the wall. I knew how it felt to come awake with him nestled around me, and how it felt to shove him off, because when I sleep I want him in reach, not on top of me. I learned how it felt when he was pressed against me and got hard--which just happened when guys slept, according to every website ever, and might easily have nothing to do with me.

I also learned how it felt to _not_ shove him away when that happened. I halfheartedly tried to tell myself it was because he might not come sleep with me anymore if he got embarrassed or thought it upset me. That was true, as far as it went, but the truth underlying it was that I enjoyed feeling him like that. Sometimes I even let myself shift against him, burrowing closer so the heat of his body could warm me right through.

There was no way Shaun wasn't also waking up sometimes and discovering how entangled we were, but we never mentioned it--not even after the times when I suspected we were equally wide awake, both of us faking sleep so he could stay curled up around me. As long as we didn't speak, we could lie there and be turned on together, neither of us ready or willing to unbalance our delicate equilibrium.

Once, he kissed the back of my neck in the middle of the night--one feather-light kiss, long after we'd gone to bed on our fifteenth birthday. He ran his hand up my side, from my hip to the top of my ribcage, careful not to even brush against my chest. When I caught his hand and wove my fingers into his, keeping him from either exploring further or pulling away, he whispered my name. I whispered his name back, and that was all. For right then, that was enough.

After that, almost two months passed before he slept in my bed again. I didn't ask why; I didn't need to. I could feel that kiss like a brand, more frightening than simple desire, of which I had plenty. My own fingers could keep _that_ manageable, even if they weren't what I wanted. But there was nothing in the world I could do to recreate the intimacy of his mouth on my neck, and I wasn't ready to ask for it--not until I was sure nothing was going to shake my certainty about the rightness of what I wanted from him. We couldn't risk being wrong.

In the meantime, we began making jokes about sex when our parents couldn't hear us. We even occasionally traded porn, showing each other what appealed to us without ever addressing why it might be significant. Through the connecting door between our rooms, I learned what he sounded like when he got off, and I let him learn the same thing about me.

The whole situation was a powder keg waiting for a spark, and we kept coming together like flint striking.

The older we got, the more Mom yelled at us for fighting and scuffling at our age instead of talking out our differences. What she didn't see, or chose not to see, was that we _did_ talk out our differences. It was everything else that made us prickly with each other. We were too sensitive to our mood changes and too aware of each other's simple, intoxicating physicality to deal with it in any way other than seizing excuses to wrestle each other to a bed or the floor.

Dad made his usual tolerant comments about kids being kids, and Mom threw up her hands in disgust. Shaun and I ignored them both and tried to fight where they couldn't see. We touched frantically and pinned each other down, heedless of bumps and bruises, until we could plausibly collapse into a sweating, panting heap. We both stayed alert for an approaching parent, making sure they never found us with my fingers buried in Shaun's hair or his hand idly kneading my hip while we bickered over whatever pretext we'd come up with that day.

**********

When we were sixteen, a classmate asked me to junior prom. I opened my mouth to say "No, thank you," and instead heard myself saying "Let me think about it." 

After school, while Shaun and I were taking a break from homework to grab a snack, I said, "Daniel Yu asked me to the dance."

Shaun's expression didn't change, but he froze, as if he'd forgotten why he'd opened the fridge. He stayed silent for long enough that Mom would've started yelling about the power bill if she and Dad had been home, and then he asked, very cautiously, "Do you want to go with him?"

"Not particularly." I shrugged and pushed past him to snag a Coke. "But it doesn't sound awful."

"George, I'm begging you, tell me you have higher standards than 'it doesn't sound awful'."

"I'm not _interested_ in him, but he's nice enough. Mom keeps saying we need to give people a chance." I kept my voice firm. "How many girls have asked you?"

"Seven." Shaun sounded appalled, but he also finally remembered what he'd been doing. He retrieved sliced soy ham and condiments and shut the fridge, taking it all to the counter to start making us a sandwich.

"Well, you could pick one and give her bragging rights about being the first girl Shaun Mason ever accepted a date with. We could see what it's like."

"Do you _want_ to?" he asked again.

"No," I said. "But maybe we should anyway."

It felt like we talked about it for hours, neither of us enthused or quite admitting to being jealous about the idea, before we agreed that I'd go with Daniel and Shaun would see if Ava was still interested. It would be the first school event we'd attended separately, and our first-ever real dance. Somehow, through both of us refusing to come clean with what we _wanted_ to say, we concluded that it would be...interesting...to be with other people and not sitting near each other or checking in for an evening.

**********

In preparation, I let Shaun pick out my entire outfit, even though that meant he enlisted Mom's help. My brother had, as far as I could tell, reasonable taste in what looked good on girls; what he didn't have was an idea of how to get me into clothing that looked like that _and_ didn't equal sending me out of the house unarmed. Between the two of them they had a dress built for me that was easy to move in, with a skirt that would tear away if something grabbed me and that was loose enough for me to holster a small gun to my thigh without being too obvious about it.

The fact that the process meant Shaun was free to dress me according to his own tastes wasn't lost on me. When the dress was ready and I put it on for the first time, I spent a while studying my reflection. It was semi-formalwear, so the skirt wasn't as short as I knew Shaun liked, with his fondness for girls' legs, but the bodice was right up his alley. Even I could tell it was a lovely piece of work, cut to flatter my cleavage without showing enough skin to let anyone feel justified in staring. I turned slowly, assessing myself. There were no frills, literal or otherwise: no beading, no sequins, no ruffles, just clean lines softened where the fabric was gathered.

I conceded that contacts were required, although I made sure I was taking a bag that held two pairs of sunglasses and a second gun, one with a biometric lock keyed only to me and Shaun so some classmate without a carry permit couldn't use it. You'd think by now the tendency of idiots to play with firearms we don't know how to use would've been beaten--or shot--out of our species, but it just isn't so.

Once we were as ready as we were ever going to be, Shaun and I headed to our first-ever school dance, which took place at a hotel with appropriate facilities. I hear that kind of thing often used to take place at actual school buildings, but now it would require such drastically different security measures from day-to-day education that it sure doesn't happen that way anymore. There's socializing at school, but nothing on the scale our parents' generation knew.

We arrived together, because it would be ridiculous not to--I understand people used to go pick their dates up, but why jump through the extra safety hoops if you weren't planning on going home with someone? Once we were screened and admitted, though, Shaun put a hand on my elbow and steered me down a hallway. "Let me get a look at you."

"You've had plenty of looks already." I fixed him with the blue-eyed stare he hated, but it didn't change the way he was looking at me, or how much I found myself liking it.

"You look amazing, George," he said, in a tone that made my spine tingle.

"You're making a fine picture yourself," I replied, and he laughed.

"Like you can see me."

"Watch it, jackass. I can always see you well enough to give you the finger."

"Don't I know it." He tapped my code into his ear cuff, making my cuff beep in response. "We're good?"

I tapped it off. "We're good." Social experiments are fine, but there was no way in hell we were risking getting out of earshot of each other without enabling some kind of communication. The ear cuffs didn't really match what either of us was wearing, any more than the guns did. They just happened to be more visible.

"I have one piece of advice for you, darling sister." Shaun's voice was suddenly dripping with honey.

I gave him a saccharine smile in return. "Oh, please draw on your _vast_ store of dating experience and share your wisdom."

"Remember to blink your freaky blue eyes once in a while," he said.

"Fake it so the guy feels comfortable," I said, saluting. "Got it. Good advice. And _you_ remember to talk about something other than explosives." Then I reconsidered and added, "Actually, that's real advice. Not everyone has my patience for the finer details of heavy weaponry."

"You're patient?"

"My point exactly. Imagine how much worse it could be."

**********

It's not so surprising that when your life has always revolved around one person, to the point that you always know where they are when you're in a room together, it's fairly easy to avoid them if you want to. In fact, Shaun and I managed to avoid each other so well that Daniel commented on it, sounding concerned.

"Georgia, are you and Shaun fighting?"

"Not at all," I said, declining to elaborate. Daniel gave me a skeptical look and spun me around, which was surprisingly fun. When I'd accepted his invitation I'd been clear that I wasn't looking for anything beyond conversation and a dancing partner. He'd claimed to be okay with it, but I hadn't stopped feeling wary until the prom had gotten underway. An hour in, I was finally able to let myself relax a little.

Dancing put us in closer physical contact than I'd shared with anyone but my brother in...ever, which made it fair game as an experiment, if not a scientifically-rigorous one. If I felt something when he touched me, that would be a verifiable result, but if I didn't, what did that prove? That _he_ didn't spark anything in me, or that no one but Shaun would?

The preliminary verdict was that I was having a better time than I'd expected, but the fun was in the moving, not the touching. Daniel turned out to be a good date, at least to my mind: he kept his hands to himself and let me keep the contact to a minimum, and he let me shepherd him off the floor when slow songs played. He still sat close enough to me at one point that our legs brushed up against each other. His tentative smile was eclipsed by dawning realization as he noticed he was leaning against more than soft, yielding flesh. I let my own smile sharpen and said, "Now would be the time to make 'is that a gun in your pocket?' jokes, if you feel so inclined."

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"Not remotely."

He sized me up. "Okay. Cool. Good to know I'm safe if anything goes wrong."

Literally-- _literally_ \--as soon as he said that, the lights flickered. "That right there is one of the phrases people should never be allowed to utter," I said, allowing my body a moment of tension before forcing it to breathe evenly. If something was going wrong, it was going wrong. Shaun and I have tried a couple of times to make comprehensive lists of all our issues with our parents. The fact that the Masons aggressively trained us not to panic has never featured.

"What're the others?" Daniel asked.

"Obvious stuff," I said. "'I'll be right back'. 'We'll be safe here.' 'Things can't get worse.' Things like that."

The power went out.

Half a second later, my ear cuff beeped. "Hey," I answered, squinting at the darkness I'd be able to see through perfectly if it weren't for my damned contacts. They don't limit my vision as much as Shaun and I joke that they do, but it was enough to be aggravating. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Shaun said in my ear, comfortingly close. "Where are you?"

"All the way across the room and practically blind and trying to decide what to do about it. Are we the only people in here who can shoot?" Our entire class and several chaperones were packed into the room. At nearly a hundred people, it was probably the largest group at least half of them had ever been in. The school had offered preparation classes leading up to the occasion for anyone who worried about the stress of being in such close quarters. Shaun and I were probably the best prepared of anyone in the room, since we'd been venturing out into mobs of other journalists practically since the day we'd been issued our provisional licenses.

"We know all the teachers are licensed to carry," Shaun noted. "They'd damn well better have guns they know how to use. I don't want my tax money going to people who can't handle an outbreak or two." He said the last in such a deadpan tone that I nearly laughed.

Instead, I said, "Okay, this 'blind' thing isn't working for me. Can you hear anything?" My bag was under my chair; I snagged it and started rummaging.

We both knew I meant "can you hear moaners?", and anyone else in the room with a hint of sense was wondering the same thing, but saying it wouldn't help. I could practically taste the fear building in the air, and none of the voices I could hear sounded like they were successfully making plans, offering explanations, or providing other intel. No one seemed to be panicking, but they would be soon if the hotel didn't make an announcement. The building had gone into lockdown when the power went out, and somehow that's just not as reassuring to most people as you might think. It certainly isn't for us.

"Nope," he said. "But this feels bad, George."

"Human error or weather are what knock the power out." I was keenly aware that everyone near me was silent and listening in. I'd already heard at least two whispers that included our name, as if it were suddenly occurring to people that all that footage of us with our parents wasn't just for show. "Local zombies just take advantage," I continued. "Maybe it's a drill?"

"Maybe. Are we playing?" He threw the ball into my court without hesitation, as if he weren't the one with the Irwin instincts.

Better safe than sorry. "We're playing. Stay put, and I'll find you. And Shaun?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't abandon your date."

He sounded downright wounded. "George! Of course not!" He didn't ask _How could you say that?_ , saving me from replying _Because she's not me_. "Mute your cuff and hold on a sec," he added.

I tapped it quickly. "Done."

For obvious reasons, I couldn't hear if he replied. What I did hear was the sudden sound of him taking up a position on top of a table, clear across the room. Shaun can move like a cat, whether he can see or not, so the noise was deliberate. Mom's trained him in all kinds of things that're useful in situations like these, including the ability to speak in one of those confident, reassuring voices that have always been so valued in broadcast journalism. He knows how to pitch that voice _loudly_ without sounding like he's shouting, and he can keep it so low it should be inaudible from a foot away, never mind the distance it can actually carry.

Most people only pay attention to the glee Irwins feel when they dive into dangerous situations, but once trouble starts, a well-trained Irwin is your best friend--as long as they give half a damn about your safety. If nothing else, saving your skin along with their own makes it more fun for them.

"Hey!" Shaun called out, cutting through the increasingly tense mutterings. "Only answer me if you're starting with 'yes'. Anyone know what's going on?" No one answered. "Does anyone know if someone's not here who should be?" Again, no answer; that was good, as long as it didn't mean we failed to look for someone who simply wasn't being accounted for. "Who else in here is armed? George, I'm already counting you."

A few voices spoke up. That was also good, although there weren't enough and none of them sounded as certain as I'd like. "Okay," Shaun said. "My sister _will_ be able to see in just a minute, so she's gonna take a look and make sure there's no trouble waiting to happen. So everybody just chill out as much as you can, and if she tells you to do something, do it. Got that?" This time more voices answered--still not everyone in the room, but enough to satisfy Shaun. "Great," he said. "George, move."

"On it," I said, letting my ear cuff pick it up. I already had my contact case and a pair of sunglasses out. I put the sunglasses on first, positioning them just right before pushing them up to perch on my head for easy access, and got to work on my contacts. The world popped into perfect, crisp view the second I had the first one out. If there hadn't been a chance of needing to shoot, I would've been fine with just the one eye. As it was, I took the time to evict the second lens and pack them both away. With no barriers between my eyes and the dark, everything was comfortable and clear as...well, not day, not for me, but the gist is the same.

I took a slow, careful look around, and then, since there was no way I'd be getting the contacts back in any time soon, I stuck them in my bag and abandoned it on my chair after I'd grabbed my better gun. Rather than do what I'd just told Shaun not to, I caught Daniel's elbow with my other hand. "Come on." He obeyed, doing his best to keep pace even though he couldn't see a thing and had to trust me to guide him. That's not a fun position to be in, even when you're used to it, and realistically, he barely knew me. Given that I get twitchy if I have to let anyone guide me but Shaun, my estimation of him went up another notch.

I was wearing low, solid heels, and the shoes had sensible grips and were actually strapped on, so they weren't the deathtraps some of the other girls' shoes were, but Shaun heard me coming. He hopped down off the table to meet me, and with what I could see was a slightly exaggerated gesture, he said, "Ava, you know my sister."

I stuck my tongue out at him, trusting him to know I was doing it, and he laughed. "Great. George, what's the situation?"

"All the doors are closed, but you know that--no air flow. Right now most people are in--" I double checked "--three main clusters against the walls, but not everyone. Stay here." I left my date in Shaun's care and headed back into the room. Without having to guide anyone, I was able to move fast, going to the people huddled in pairs and trios and directing them to the groups closest to them. At least four people flinched when I touched them, even though I warned them first.

Joel, a guy I'd had the misfortune of sharing several classes with, didn't quite recoil when I said his name, but the look he gave the air by my shoulder made me want to leave him there, or maybe use him for bait. I'd never touched him in my life, but he'd said enough nasty things to me over the years that _Shaun_ had touched him several times, and not gently, either.

"Remember how you like to tell me I'm a freak?" I asked evenly. "Zombie eyes mean I can _see_ you, asshole."

His expression changed into something less readable. "Even in this?"

"Even in this." I flattened my voice even more. "Now stop standing by yourself like a meal-to-go for any moaners that happen to be in the vicinity." I grabbed his shoulder and shoved, not bothering to be careful. "Move. That way."

The entire room was listening. When he still hesitated, I took that into consideration before very deliberately taking the safety off my gun. The click echoed in the silence. "Delayed reaction time is a possible early symptom of amplification," I recited at him. "So _react_ before I start debating whether you're a threat to everyone in here."

He wasn't going to forgive me for that any time ever. With any luck, he'd also never forget that I'd had a gun pointed at him and _hadn't_ shot him, and it'd even out. Thousands of shots get fired every year on far flimsier pretexts, enough of which turn out to be valid that no one really wants to start challenging them legally.

Whatever he was thinking, he let me herd him over to a group of people, and that was all that really mattered. I put the safety back on the second he took a step.

**********

In the end, the explanation was anticlimactic, which was a relief to everyone there but Shaun. The blackout lasted for less than an hour, all told, and turned out to have been caused by a small animal getting caught in a nearby power line, resulting in a short circuit. That wasn't something preventable. What _was_ preventable was the hotel's backup generator's failure to kick in because maintenance staff had apparently all thought someone _else_ was taking care of keeping the fuel from drying out from disuse.

No harm done, but I guessed our school would be having words with the hotel staff for not keeping us in the loop, if they weren't too busy suing over the generator failure. The odds of the school ever using the hotel as a venue again were nonexistent, which was a bit of a shame, but that's the cost of gross incompetence.

Neither Daniel nor Ava seemed to mind that Shaun and I were a unit again for the duration of the blackout, guns drawn and conversation at a minimum until we heard the distinctive thrum of the building powering up again. It gave me enough warning to get my sunglasses safely in place and shut my eyes most of the way, which left me in the unfamiliar position of watching everyone _else_ blinking in the sudden brightness.

Once everything was clearly under control, we did the expected thing and split up again. Daniel continued to be pleasant and unexpectedly funny, and apparently comfortable with the fact that I'd just spent part of the evening walking armed through the darkness as if it were daylight. That was nice. And the only comment he made about the fact that I opted not to put my contacts back in was that I looked more like myself in the sunglasses anyway.

But the experiment was over, as far as I was concerned.


	2. Chapter 2

I think Mom was genuinely let down that we both came home just after midnight, and that we came home together. Given her keenness for the idea that we--both of us!--were planning to spend the evening with other people, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd been entertaining daydreams of at least one of us rolling in past dawn, clothes in disarray and virtue somewhat less intact. She probably had a speech all prepared, half disapproval and half "oh, my little boy/girl is growing up", for whatever cameras she might have arranged to be in the area.

Once we were inside, Shaun took one for the team and stayed downstairs long enough to fill our parents in on what had happened, ostensibly to let me go get changed out of the dress. As I made my escape he gave me a quick look that kindled an uncomfortable knot of heat in my stomach. I locked myself in my room and kept the dress on.

Eventually I heard Shaun's bedroom door open and close, and then a tap at the door between our rooms. "Come in," I called.

He wandered in and draped himself over my bed, hands folded behind his head. "So how was your date, George? Did you let him get to second base?"

Well. _That_ was preemptive. "No," I said. "There was a gun in the way. You?"

The look he gave me before he answered, already watching for my reaction, told me exactly what he was going to say. "Ava kissed me."

My chest tightened painfully. "And how was that?"

"Um...fine, I guess. Nice. Kinda weird." He worried his lip, waiting for me to say something else. I didn't. "I stopped her."

"Why?"

He got up without answering and turned most of the black lights off, dimming the room to a point where he could still see reasonably well if he worked at it. "Want to bet that's the only dance we'll ever go to?"

The non-sequitur made me frown at him. "Maybe."

"So we can scratch that off our all-American-teenager to-do list. Prom: check." Shaun reached for my sunglasses, giving me plenty of time to stop him, and took them off when I didn't protest. "It was a good excuse to get you all dressed up."

My throat went dry. "If you say so."

"That was the best part, trust me." He looked me up and down, taking his time. My heart skipped every time his gaze lingered somewhere. His gaze lingered a _lot_. Finally he said, "I'm allowed to admire my sister, right?"

This was it, then. Even if I'd wanted to, there was no way to pretend not to know what he was asking.

I weighed each word before I spoke. The silence probably lasted only as long as a breath--two breaths, _our_ breaths--and then I broke it.

"You're allowed to do whatever you want with your sister."

The sound he made was indescribable, and made my knees go weak. Not that it mattered if I was a bit wobbly--Shaun's hands settled on my waist, pulling me in close. As soon as I leaned into him, he let go again, touching my face instead. Very, very slowly, he stroked the pads of his thumbs along my eyebrows, holding me still while he stared into what I've been assured is the bottomless black of my eyes.

"This doesn't mean you're _not_ my sister." He said it so carefully, as if we could still take back what we were admitting, and so fiercely, refusing to forfeit anything of what we already had.

"Of course it doesn't. It means we're supposed to feel like this is incredibly fucked up and probably hate ourselves."

Shaun laughed. "Do you?"

"Nope."

"Me either." He held me firmly against him, resting his chin on the top of my head. I wrapped my arms around his waist, holding him just as tightly.

We stood that way for a long time, breathing together, as silent and close as if we were in my bed feigning sleep. "You're still my sister," he said finally, as if needing to make sure I'd understood him correctly the first time. He sounded scared.

"Yes, I am." I tugged against his hold until I could take a step back and look up at him. "Nothing can change that, Shaun. It doesn't matter what else we are." Our faces were so close together that his breath tickled my cheek. "Now get on with it." I couldn't resist needling him. "You're the one with all the experience here."

"Right. My extensive five minutes of experience."

He kissed me before I could reply. It was warm and awkward and I couldn't shake the feeling that I should be concerned about how his mouth had been on another girl's only an hour or so earlier. I wasn't concerned in the slightest. It was on mine now, and he was clutching at me so hard I could feel each finger individually on my ribs.

"Shut your eyes," he said, and when my eyelids closed he kissed them too, over and over again. It was one of the tenderest things I'd ever felt from him, and I've seen him gentle in ways no one else could imagine. "You can look now," he muttered into my hair when he was done.

I tried to sound stern. "Make up your mind."

"You know damn well I made up my mind _years_ ago, Georgia Mason." His hands settled on my hips again, drawing me back against him.

It was no closer than we'd been only a few minutes before; there was no way we _could_ be physically closer than that as long as we were both still dressed. It was still unmistakably different. Shaun's arms offered the same comfort and safety as always, but now he was holding me with a hunger as intense as mine.

I could have kept myself from moaning at the sensation, but there was no reason not to let him hear it--and plenty of reason to want him to, judging by the way his grip on me tightened. "I love you, jerk," I told him. It was possibly the most unnecessary thing I'd ever said in my life, and the most liberating.

"Same to you." He grinned, but there was a tremor in his voice. "I love you more than breathing."

I reached up and traced the thin diagonal scar that starts at his collarbone and cuts across his chest, almost to his sternum. It's not a flashy "look, I cheated death!" scar, but I could easily follow the ridge of it through his shirt with just a fingertip. "So not so much, then?"

"Don't ruin the moment, George."

It was my turn to grin. "Is that possible?"

"Not really."

That was the last thing either of us said for quite a while. Shaun brought his mouth back to mine, leading off our first experiment in actual open-mouthed kissing.

We wound up on my bed without either of us suggesting it, right where we'd spent so many nights next to each other, only now he was on top of me and we could both feel how aroused he was, could both make tiny, gasping sounds of wanting more.

There was nothing slow or subtle--or virginal, at that--about my body's response to his. It didn't matter that we were both still dressed, or that I'd never been free before to press right up against him when he was turned on. All of my instincts assessed that first real feel of an erection pushing at me and clamored that yes, it felt good, but it would be infinitely better to get it inside me. The familiar tension of needing to orgasm had me wound too tight to relax, but that _ache_ , the feeling of emptiness and of knowing that I was already touching exactly what I needed to take it away, caught me off guard with its intensity.

I was reluctant to stop kissing him for something as silly as talking, but it didn't seem likely that he'd turned into a mind-reader, and I wanted him to know. "That feels amazing," I said.

Shaun seemed better able to shape words than I was. "Which part?"

"Everything." I knew my smile was vague, but I managed to move a little against him. "It all feels so good."

A shudder went through him. I tightened my arms around him, stroking the warm solidity of his back. Everything we were doing was new, but I knew the feeling of his back under my hands, and it gave me something to hold on to--in more ways than one--while we charted new territory together.

He rested his forehead against mine and took a deep breath. "How far are we taking this? Tonight, I mean?"

"As far as we want," I said. "Keep kissing me."

We were enough in sync, always, that he knew as well as I did that sex wasn't in the cards, not on this first night. There was too much we had to talk over first. But he did keep kissing me, soft and then hard and then soft again, each kiss a promise. I kissed him back until my mouth stopped feeling awkward and started feeling bruised, and then I kissed him some more.

There was an unavoidable clumsiness to what we were doing, but that was fine. More than fine. If I'd tried to put what I wanted into words, there might have been a lot of specifics, but none of that mattered all that much. We could do whatever we both wanted to, and _that_ was what we wanted. I had his skin and his hands and his body touching mine. Specifics were incidental.

Neither of us wanted to stop, but as it got later, we were spending less time making out and more time just cuddling into each other. That was just as good, in its own way, but it wasn't all that was happening. We were both exhausted, and more and more frequently, we'd be kissing and suddenly one of us would stop, tripped up by the unfamiliarity of it all.

Each time, without saying anything, we just held each other until the moment passed. Nothing about our relationship had ever changed before. No matter how right it felt, and no matter how long we'd been waiting for it, a little fear was unavoidable.

At about five, we called it a night. The novelty and the pleasure and the closeness were still intoxicating, but when they were accompanied by an equal measure of being freaked out, it was definitely time to go to sleep. We could start dealing with the logistics of what we were doing when we'd had some rest. It wasn't like either of us was going anywhere.

"I should get out of this dress," I said. I took a stab at looking prim, knowing it would make Shaun laugh. "Out of the dress and into pajamas, I mean. I don't sleep with boys on the first date."

"I hope you mean you don't fuck boys on the first date." He planted his elbows on either side of my head, resting his chin in his hands. "I thought you'd probably want me to sleep here, but if you need some time to think, it's okay."

"Idiot." I got both hands behind his neck and pulled him back down. "Yes--" I kissed him between words "--I want you to sleep here."

He lowered his head further, kissing from the corner of my mouth to my earlobe. "Since you asked so nicely."

**********

I woke up with Shaun cuddled loosely around me. My room was completely dark other than the faint glow from the watch on my night table, which informed me it was past noon. "Are you awake?" I asked, keeping my voice low. If he wasn't, he needed to be; sooner or later our parents would come knocking, even if they wouldn't try to come in. They might _want_ in, and we could never be sure they hadn't learned to get around our locks, but if they had they wouldn't be stupid enough to do it while we were inside.

"Yeah," he said, at the same volume he'd use any other time when his mouth was near my ear. Before I could dig a warning elbow into his ribs, he added, "I heard Mom and Dad leave about half an hour ago."

"Oh." I shut my eyes again and exhaled slowly, taking stock of exactly how we were touching. I was lying on my side with Shaun behind me, and he had an arm slung over me. It was the same way we'd woken up together dozens of times before. It was also completely different; for one thing, I didn't have to pretend not to know why he wasn't snuggled right up against me. "How long have you been awake?"

"An hour or so." He sounded alert and utterly content--a rare combination when he isn't actively engaged in doing something, or preferably three somethings. "I got up for a few minutes and you didn't even budge."

"Mmm." I rubbed my eyes. "Getting up for a sec is a good idea. Don't go anywhere."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

If he'd moved so much as an inch when I came back to bed--teeth brushed, face rinsed, and painkillers taken--I couldn't tell. He spooned himself around me when I lay down again, still careful to give me a bit of space. Ordinarily I appreciate that, but space wasn't what I was in the mood for--and it's _never_ what he's in the mood for.

"Hold me tighter," I said, reaching behind me to touch his hip.

The way he nuzzled my jaw tickled. "Gladly." He shifted a little and tugged me closer, so that his chest was against my back and that familiar hardness that I was finally free to acknowledge was at the base of my spine. He gasped a little at the contact, and then again, louder, when I leaned back into him, hooking a foot at the back of his calf to keep him there.

We lay like that for a long time, savoring it: both of us awake, both of us relishing the closeness, and both of us wanting more by the minute.

"How turned on are you?" I asked eventually. "Scale of one to ten."

Shaun laughed like he couldn't believe I was asking. "Eleven. At least." His lips brushed against my neck, just below my hairline. "For you, George. Only for you."

Hearing it put into words sent an unexpected shiver through me, making my hips jerk. His hands clamped down in response, holding me in place while he rubbed hard against my back--once. It was pure reflex; he immediately loosened his grip again and backed off. His fingers moved restlessly at the hem of my top. "I'm gonna lose my mind if we stay like this," he said.

"Maybe you should do that again." My voice refused to work properly. "Do you want to? Will it make you come?"

His reply was immediate and non-negotiable. "Yeah, it will, and I want to, but only if I can touch you."

I ignored the impulse to ask what he thought he'd been doing, if not touching me. It didn't seem like a good time for snark. Instead I paused before responding, trying to figure out what parameters I wanted. We weren't having sex--we _weren't_ \--even if it suddenly seemed like we weren't getting back out of bed without coming pretty close. I had no intention of letting him leave to masturbate, even knowing he'd be thinking about me, and if the alternative was having him do it with me there, well, the line between him coming from touching himself or touching me seemed negligible. Barely worth mentioning.

I was rationalizing the hell out of it, and I didn't care. I wanted to feel Shaun orgasm after years of half-hearing it, and I wanted him to touch me, to get off _from_ touching me, because just the idea had me so turned on I couldn't think straight.

I answered by guiding his hand between my legs, on top of my pajama bottoms instead of under them. His thumb slipped under the waistband to rub my bare hipbone on the way down, but he didn't argue.

The pajamas I was wearing were thin, summer-weight fabric, worn down to real softness; I'd chosen what would let me feel his warmth best while we slept, and when his hand settled against me, it was almost-- _almost_ \--like I was wearing nothing at all. I held my breath, memorizing the feel of his fingers.

He kissed the outer edge of my ear, where the skin was still tender from wearing a cuff for hours, and said, "I want to make you come first."

I knew that tone: what we were doing was giving him the same endorphin rush fieldwork does. It sent fresh shivers through me, desire twined together with what shreds of caution I was holding on to. The idea that he might get off on the possibility of being caught was riskier than we could afford, no matter how much I enjoy the contact high I sometimes get from him when he's in that kind of mood. I added it to the list of things we needed to talk about and put it out of my mind.

"Why first?"

"'cause sometimes getting off makes me dopey for a while."

"You must have a _lot_ of orgasms," I deadpanned. Shaun bonked his forehead against the back of my head rather than taking his hands off me to whack my arm. "But yes, okay."

I heard him moisten his lips. "Show me how?"

"I can try, but it's usually pretty easy for me, and you're not exactly starting cold."

He laughed again. "Scale of one to ten?"

"Eleven," I said. He was starting to move his fingers, slowly, stroking and massaging as he explored the only part of my body he'd never touched. "For you."

I held still at first, trying to let him get acquainted, until he suddenly found an angle that sent sparks of pleasure skittering straight up my spine and behind my eyes. He froze at the involuntary sound I made. "Right there," I managed. My hand was still on his, making it easy to show him which part of what he'd been doing had elicited that particularly vocal response. "That was an 'oh my God, yes, please' noise."

"Show me," he whispered, and this time it wasn't guidance he was after--not entirely.

"Okay." I rolled so I was more on my stomach than my side, grinding down on his fingers. I could feel his excitement in all kinds of ways, not just the obvious, and everything about it heightened mine. He was trembling against me, breathing every bit as hard as I was.

Knowing what a hands-on learner he is meant I knew how avidly he was taking in the way I moved, learning the angles and pressure I like from what I was doing. He was also quickly figuring out how much weight he could put on me while leaving me free to move under him, and that felt good in a whole different way.

Best of all, it didn't take him long to learn to hold still when I got him right where I wanted him. Having his fingers to work myself against was wonderful, for both the novelty and the knowledge that they were _his_ , not mine, but it was his voice that was driving me out of my head: the unrestrained delight in it, the way he kept saying my name and other things, no filter at all, just a stream of _God, George, show me show me let me feel let me see, so fucking hot, George, I can **feel** you, I can feel you getting wetter_ , increasingly breathless through the kisses he was trailing across my shoulders, up the back of my neck. I'd been dreaming about his mouth there for so long, and it felt as intimate as I'd remembered.

"Like this," I said, when it was almost enough, and then I stopped trying to talk, or to process the words he was saying. What mattered was the encouragement and naked desire in his voice, how good everything felt, and that Shaun was right there, holding me close while I shook with pleasure.

I started scrambling to find my voice the moment I could, when I was still overwhelmed and trembling and moving against his hand. "Now you," I said. I hadn't had everything I wanted yet; not even close. "I want to feel it."

People talk about butterflies in their stomach, but I felt like I had them under my skin, everywhere, my pulse beating like frantic wings. Shaun's heart was pounding against my shoulder, not quite in time with mine, adding to the effect. He shifted a little, and then his erection was pressed to my lower back again, bare skin on skin under my shirt. I squeezed my eyes shut, giving my imagination free rein while he ground up against me. "Is this okay?" he asked.

I nodded. "I'm thinking about how it'll feel." He gasped in a way that made me grin. If he was as responsive to my voice as I was to his, wow, we were going to have fun. _My_ voice was ragged and maybe a little spacey; I was weirdly lightheaded."I'm imagining how it'll feel when you do that inside me." I gave the "when" just a bit of emphasis, reaching back to see how I could touch him.

I couldn't get my hand between us, but I could graze my fingertips along his side, and then I wasn't really focusing on that because I was busy learning how it felt to have him come on my back--convulsive and rhythmic, his whole body driving against me, except where he had his mouth pressed into the crook of my shoulder to muffle the sound of my name.

He still had his hand between my legs, and the orgasm made his fingers clench, pushing as far into me as they could through my pajamas. It was sudden and hard and nowhere near enough. I grabbed his wrist as if that would let me get his fingers all the way in; his hands were bigger than mine, his fingers were longer, it would feel so _good_...

It would feel _so_ good.

I shoved his hand down the inside of my thigh, to moderately less tempting territory, and let go with a whimper. I could imagine his fingers. I could imagine a lot more, too, and I wanted it so badly I might have started yanking my clothes off if he were still hard. I bit down on my lip and thought about numbers, internet-provided statistics about refractory periods and the average male sixteen-year-old, trying to reduce it to data and not how soon I could learn exactly how it felt to have all that hardness and motion inside me where it belonged. My hormones were screaming as if it had been months since I'd gotten off, not minutes.

My hormones would have to wait. I wasn't ready; _we_ weren't ready, logistically if nothing else. I just had to keep telling myself that.

"I'm fine," I said before Shaun could freak out at my reaction. "I'm fine, it's fine, I just--really, _really_ want you. A lot." I tripped on the words, trying to explain. My heart was racing faster and faster instead of slowing, making me glad I was lying down.

Apparently _I_ was freaking out.

"George." Shaun's breathing was heavy and uneven, hot against my ear; somehow he still sounded gentle. "Hey. Georgia. I've got you." He let go of me long enough to adjust his boxers and then spooned against me, heedless of the wetness across my back. I tried to focus on that, how it had been warm but now was cooling and messy and slipperier than I'd expected, sticking my shirt to my skin-- _his_ skin to my skin. "It's fine, George. We're fine. We won't do anything we're not both ready for, okay?"

He does that at the oddest times--comes so close to reading my mind that it should be scary. It never is. It's just Shaun being with me, tuned into me in a way I can't imagine _anyone_ being with someone they haven't shared their entire life with.

Shaun was with me, and I was already calming. "Okay." He was kissing the nape of my neck again, then along my shoulder, light enough to be comforting instead of arousing. It was a relief; I didn't feel like we'd done anything we shouldn't, or anything I wasn't eager to repeat, but we couldn't afford not to be cautious.

"That felt really good," I said.

"Yeah." There was a barely-suppressed note of glee in his voice, in contrast to the soothing kisses. "Just imagine once we figure out what the hell we're doing."

"Yeah," I echoed. My room was still dark enough that I could hardly see, which meant Shaun was effectively blind, but he wasn't fidgeting yet, and neither was I. For once, I had no idea which of us was likely to start getting restless first. I closed my eyes again and settled in to see whether I could outlast him.

**********

As it turned out, what broke us out of our unusually mindless state was the house phone signaling a call from Dad. I swore, rubbing my eyes and trying to drag my thoughts back into coherence.

Shaun recovered faster. He put his hand over my mouth, presumably in case I regained the power of speech ahead of my ability to assess the situation, and said, "Accept call. Hello?"

Dad obviously had his phone set to tell him which room we were picking up from, because he opened with, "Shaun? Where's Georgia?"

"Down in the kitchen," Shaun lied cheerfully, ignoring the perfunctory kick I gave him in response. There was no strength behind it from my current angle, anyway. "Want me to get her?"

"No need. We're checking to see if you kids are planning to be home for dinner."

I frowned. We were out of the house a lot more now that we had provisional journalism licenses, but our budget didn't allow for eating out often, so we were still usually in attendance for Mom's cherished family meals. Shaun's thought process was the same as mine; he didn't try to keep from sounding puzzled as he said, "Yeah, I think so. How come?"

"Well, after last night, we thought one or both of you might have a social engagement."

Shaun pressed his mouth against my ear and murmured "After last night", tone half-mocking and too soft for the phone to pick up. "Sorry, Dad," he said aloud. "No second date for me, and I don't think George is looking for an encore with hers, either."

"Ah. All right, then." Dad kept any disappointment tidily out of his voice. "Well, we'll be home in an hour or so. Remember to stay hydrated."

"Uh--" Now Shaun sounded completely blank. "Sure? Okay. See you later." He paused, and when Dad didn't say anything else, he added, "Disconnect."

"He was reminding us what to do if we're hungover," I said after a click indicated the connection was broken. "Which I could have covered if you hadn't said I wasn't here."

"Sorry," he said, without a shred of repentance.

I sighed and rolled over to kiss him, because that was an option now: I could be annoyed and _still kiss him_. The thought made my mood brighten despite Dad's--and by extension, the rest of the world's--intrusion into our warm bubble of afterglow. But it was still time to start making ourselves presentable.

"I'm going to turn my lights on." As I spoke, I had a sudden thought, and added, "Close your eyes."

"Uh...okay? They're closed."

I got up, switched the black lights on, and assessed the situation--my bed, our nightclothes, the two of us--and shook my head. "Okay, this could look a little weird."

"Why would--" Shaun broke off as he looked. "Um."

"Yeah." I sat down by his feet, trying not to laugh. Avoiding the dampest spots where we'd been messing around was dead easy, for exactly the same reason he sometimes gets undressed in my room after fieldwork: a _lot_ of bodily fluids show up under black lights. Blood fluoresces, but other substances--let's say they light up a lot more dramatically.

"Damn." He sat up and stared at the sheets and then my back, looking downright impressed.

I held up a cautionary hand, which made him stare at it--and the glowing patches--instead. "This is a judgment-free zone, but if you're one of those guys who's got a thing about semen, tell me now."

He made a face at me. "What kind of 'thing'?"

"Oh, please. I have the same internet you do. Some guys are all into it."

He ducked his head in the way that meant he was probably blushing--even I couldn't tell in this light--but his voice was even. "I wasn't getting off on the idea of coming _on_ you, no."

I shrugged. "Okay."

"You obviously knew about this," he grumbled, mostly joking.

I smirked at him. "Remember when I told you I appreciate that you wash your hands between jerking off and using my computer?"

"You--" Shaun's memory for conversational details is as good as mine, sometimes. "You've been paying attention to that since we were _thirteen_?"

"To keeping my keyboards clean? You bet. Not my fault you never thought about how I knew."

"Excuse me for assuming it was because you know I'd _die_ if I sucked at sanitization, not because my hands didn't glow in your room." But he was laughing when he swatted my shoulder. "Did you find out 'cause _your_ hands glow?"

"Not exactly."

He eyed me dubiously. "George, the hearing-through-walls goes both ways. I know how often you get off, too."

I waggled my fingers at him, trying not to think about him listening, because that was slightly embarrassing and more than a little hot. "Uh-huh. But not everything lights up like a Christmas tree. Check your hands compared to mine."

Looking at his hands and thinking about where they'd been made him swallow visibly. A glance at his lap showed it wasn't the only visible reaction. "I wasn't touching under your clothes," he said.

"Well, when you do, it'll be less dramatic. I found out from reading about UV applications at crime scenes."

"Right. Of course you did."

We both fell silent, but neither of us moved. I knew we had to deal with the evidence of what we'd been up to and start acting like nothing had happened, but I wasn't ready yet. Shaun obviously felt the same way; when I didn't immediately get back up, he leaned against me, resting his head on my shoulder.

What finally propelled me into action was the fact that the evidence was getting ever less comfortable. "I need a shower."

"Me too." Shaun kissed my neck and straightened up. "Go first. I'll start taking care of stuff in here."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm just kinda sticky, but you've clearly been up to a whole night of debauchery." He snickered at the look I gave him. "Seriously, George, I can strip your bed as well as you can, and then you can throw everything in the laundry while I'm in there. Scram. Leave me some hot water."

"Oh, like I've ever used all the hot water."

"First time for everything," he replied. In the space of those four words he went from quipping to staring at me. I stared back, delighted by how his eyes looked--intently focused, pupils wide with desire. We had one first time down, with so many left to go.

"We're gonna need to talk," I said.

He snorted. "You know that's code for 'I'm breaking up with you', right?"

"And _you_ know I'm never breaking up with you." My throat was uncomfortably tight, in a way swallowing didn't help; I was feeling lightheaded again. "The sooner we start figuring out how we're going to handle this, the sooner we get other first times."

"I like the way you think." We both stood, and he nudged me another step away from the bed, reaching for the fitted corner of my sheet. "Also, for the record, I love you."

I smiled. "More than breathing?"

"So much more than breathing." He raised a hand, crossing his fingers. "And me and breathing, we're like _this_."

"You only get one lie a day," I said, "and we both know you're a suicidal freak."

"George--"

I didn't let him finish. "I love you more than breathing, too. But right now I love showers more than anything in the world."

He let it go. "Good to know where I stand." He closed the small distance between us, kissed me, and gave me a spin and a gentle shove between my shoulder blades to propel me towards the bathroom. "Say hi to your true love for me."


End file.
